Topology of a Phantom City

Monday, March 12, 2018

I am extremely happy and excited to be able to unveil the multiple components of A Spy in the Panopticon, which has just been released by Mount Abraxas Press. Click on the images for larger resolution.

Thursday, January 18, 2018

I am honored and very excited to announce A Spy in the Panopticon, a boxed set of my latest work which will be released by Mount Abraxas Press in February, 2018. A woman peers through a hidden eyepiece into a bedroom of lavish design in ‘A Spy in the Panopticon’, the title novella. What she observes in the exquisite chamber is progressively unraveled over the course of an intricately woven narrative, the many threads of which converge upon a series of increasingly enigmatic motifs: lenses, mirrors, cameras, and prisms; illicit transmissions and invisible signals; unspeakable passwords and etheric emanations; and the infiltration of an inexplicable ministry replete with intrigues, counter-plots, and duplicitous technologies.A crucial document is laboriously authenticated beneath the ravages of the wild hunt in ‘The Notary’. ‘Paraffin’ follows the descent of a housemaid into the impossible depths of her employer’s past. Two siblings, in ‘That Holy and Formless Fire’, engage in precarious activities involving a transistor radio and a book of poetry. In ‘Imperium’, an infirmity suffered by the wife of a magistrate reveals an ingenious and well-concealed stratagem.

BOOK IA Spy in the Panopticon

i. The Spyholeii. The Mirroriii. The Cameraiv. The Prismv. Signal/Transmissionvi. Blackoutvii. The Spy in the Panopticon

Friday, December 8, 2017

Wound of Wounds: An Ovation for Emil Cioran is back from the printers at last.

Shipping begins mid-next week. The book will still be available from Fantastic Literature in the UK, and Ziesings in the US as soon as they receive their copies. After three months from today's date, a free PDF copy of the book will be available on request from myself or from the publisher at exoccidente@gmail.com.

Friday, November 10, 2017

I am extremely pleased, humbled, honored, and exalted to announce the latest anthology from Mount Abraxas Press in Bucharest, edited by D.T. Ghetu and myself. Wound of Wounds will be published as two deluxe volumes in a single slipcase, and is expected to be released in early December.

Misanthropos

Eugene Thacker

Bach’s Marionettes

Douglas Thompson

The Aristocracy of Weak Nerves

Justin Isis

This Disquiet Demiurge

Alcebiades Diniz Miguel

He is Heading Your Way Already

Rhys Hughes

The Translator of God's Silence

Thomas Strømsholt

Saint Severina's Fire

Damian Murphy

Horrill Hill

Karim Ghahwagi

Dead Engrained Skin

Jonathan Wood

The Funeral Cry

Stephan Friedman

Obsolete Systems

Adam Golaski

The Genealogy of Night

Andrew Condous

The Infinite Error

Jon Padgett

The Treasons of the Rue de L'Odeon

Colin Insole

Pay No Worship to the Garish Sun

D.P. Watt

The European Monster Part II

Adam S. Cantwell

Writing Instructions

Charles Schneider

We will proceed with fiery sermons and scathing condemnations, written over the course of a single sleepless night, scribed beneath the light of our afflictions and sealed with the blood of our iniquities; we’ll pen testaments to the intoxication of the exile, the self-abnegation of the poet, the secret narcissism of the mystic, and the immolation of the saint in the intolerable fires of perfection; what is needed is nothing less than a full-scale assault upon the bastions of fate and servitude—black epistles written on discarded cigarettes, smuggled in the broken hearts of the defectors, on the merits and the tedium of the labor of abandonment.

Friday, August 4, 2017

I could not be more pleased to announce the release of my new book, Abyssinia, on the Mount Abraxas imprint of Ex Occidente Press in Bucharest. The book is printed in a new format, which is, in my opinion, the most exquisite style yet from this most exquisite of presses.

Abyssinia follows the intrigues and deceptions of two women, each of which are staying in one of seven luxury suites in the Hotel Argentum. The suites are named after former European territories whose boundaries have since been subsumed. Petra has checked into Fiume, whose final days were spent beneath the deranged auspices of the poet and dictator Gabriele D’Annunzio. Celia is staying in Galicia, whose fate was sealed soon after the First World War. Between the women stands Karl Reginald von Lobkowicz, an antiquated doll which Celia is seldom seen without. Petra’s fascination vacillates between the cracked and blemished figure and its eccentric owner. The matter is further complicated by the appearance of an eighth suite, which appears to be concealed somewhere within the Hotel grounds.

Saturday, May 6, 2017

It is a pleasure and an honor to announce that Daughters of Apostasy, a collection of my stories and novellas, is now available to order from Snuggly Books as part of The Latin Bundle. There are six books in total, including new masterpieces from Quentin S. Crisp and Rhys Hughes, as well as three classics of decadent and symbolist literature which have never before appeared in English. The books can be purchased in paperback or hardcover (the former shown above, the latter below). Daughters of Apostasy will be available to buy as a standalone book on September 18, while the bundle ships in early June.

An act of trespass, the subtle topology of an opulent hotel, a lengthy composition involving an exiled abbess, a letter mailed to an unknown recipient, a border station concealed by inexplicable winds, an antiquated electronic game, a rite of passage modulated by a metronome, a Gnostic heresy, a ruined church, an employee engaged in illicit acts of passion: by these and several other devices do the daughters of apostasy seek to irritate the vessels of the earth. Strange wine may be distilled thereby, and thus might the obsessive aspirant perceive the tenets of a hidden doctrine.

In these five stories and novellas, the intrigues and stratagems of interlopers, initiates, poets, and bibliophiles are revealed in all their illicit splendor. By way of complex and labyrinthine routes do they come to obtain impossible relics not known even among the kings of the earth.

Contents:

The Scourge and the Sanctuary

Permutations of the Citadel

The Salamander Angel (long version)

A Book of Alabaster

The Music of Exile

The first four pieces have previously appeared in collections published by Les Éditions de L’Oubli (Infra Noir and A Distillate of Heresy), while 'The Music of Exile', the longest story in the book, is new and has not been published elsewhere.